Manufactured Softness
by Elbowless-Rubber-Duck
Summary: One second, Hermione is running through the Forbidden Forest with Death Eaters hot on her heels because Voldemort may be dead, but the fight isn't over yet. And then she's out of the woods, and there is Hogwarts: silent, beautiful against a night sky, and strangely whole. Accidental Time Travel AU


September 1, 1944

One second, Hermione is running through the Forbidden Forest with Death Eaters hot on her heels because Voldemort may be dead, but the fight isn't over yet. And then she's out of the woods, and there is Hogwarts: silent, beautiful against a night sky, and strangely whole. There is no fighting. There is no army. There is only the golden glow of the lit windows reflected in the lake and the crispness of Autumn air.

This is not her Hogwarts. She knows it in an instant. Her Hogwarts is crumbling. Her Hogwarts is littered with dead bodies. Dead _children._ And it is supposed to be spring. The leaves should not be falling.

All it takes is one look at a confused, young, _living,_ Albus Dumbledore at the front door, and Hermione crumples to the ground, unconscious.

September 2, 1944

Hermione Granger has injuries that she cannot explain. The word "mudblood" carved into her arm. The long, puckered scar that runs right in between her breasts. The abrasions on her palms and knees. The cracked rib she hadn't even known about. The criss-cross of fresh wounds across her back from the battle. The tissue damage from extended exposure to dark magic.

Madame Pomfrey—also painfully young—is trying to heal her, trying to make sense of the story the scars on her body are telling. Hermione has no answers. Albus Dumbledore lies for her, calling her a refugee of the war. Pomfrey and Dippet look at her like she's made of glass after that.

Hermione wants to laugh. How can they think she's fragile now, after seeing her scars? She lied through her teeth while under the cruciatus. Nothing can break her now.

September 9, 1944

She is wrong. She is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The first time she sees Tom Riddle, she feels nothing, and so she thinks that she is numb. Because he already has two horcruxes and four murders under his belt, and because he is the man who will ruin her life in the future. He is the man who will kill hundreds, who will kill children, innocents. But she sees him and feels nothing, and his eyes pass over her. And she wonders if knowing he will die is doing this to her, making her apathetic.

But seeing him once is not the same as seeing him every day, and it is the latter that wears on her. He laughs, and he smiles, and he gathers people around him. And they adore him. He is the most popular boy in school. He is the most sought-after bachelor at Hogwarts. He is handsome and charming, and nothing at all like the Voldemort that Hermione remembers.

Except.

Except his smiles never quite reach his eyes. There is something unspeakably cold in them. And there are moments, so quick that if Hermione wasn't looking for them, she wouldn't ever see, where his mask drops and she can see something monstrous in those handsome features.

Knowing this, seeing what nobody else sees, makes her feel like she's carrying the weight of all his sins on her own back. Every day tires her so easily that she barely has the energy to get out of bed. She wants to go home.

But that is not quite true, because there is a war at home, and nobody wants to go back to that. She wants to go back to the home that she should have. One where she never had to obliviate her parents to keep them safe. One where she didn't know what torture felt like. One where she and Harry and Ron could have just been students, not soldiers. Not sacrifices.

That home does not exist. It has never existed.

 _But,_ she thinks as watches Tom Riddle from across the potions classroom, _I could change that._

September 23, 1944

There is no hope of ever going back to her own time. Dumbledore has told her that, and even if he hadn't, Hermione would have assumed so. There is no reason for her to preserve the timeline. There is no reason not to hide in one of the hidden passages that Harry showed her and wait for Tom to pass by so she can kill him when he's least expecting it.

She would do it, too, if not for the fact that he has two horcruxes. And, well, she also doesn't think that killing Tom will solve the problem. Riddle is a manipulator before anything else, and he is also a half-blood. Hermione is fairly certain this blood-supremacy thing is mostly a platform that he uses to gain power, which means that while Tom is still a horrible person and is still responsible for utilizing antiquated beliefs as a well-aimed sword, it also means that the threat won't just go away if she kills him.

It is a perplexing issue. How do you dismantle an entire belief-system founded on racism without resorting to wiping out all of the racists?

She can only think of one answer: from the inside.

October 1, 1944

Getting in with Tom's baby death-eaters requires a carefully crafted plan that Hermione is not even forty percent sure will work, but she also figures that she has nothing to lose if she dies in the process.

Step one: get noticed.

Step two: prove your value.

Step three: exhibit interest/knowledge in the dark arts.

Step four: make yourself indispensable.

Step five: prove that blood-supremacy is rot.

It all goes to shit before she can even get past step one, which really, she should have expected given her luck.

She is in potions, brewing draught of the living death. She's done it often enough that she could probably brew it in her sleep, if not for the fact that Slytherins have a nasty habit of trying to sabotage Gryffindor potions, and Hermione is, surprisingly, still a Gryffindor even after all the shit she's been through. After all that she's done.

She doesn't know what MacNair throws into her potion, but it explodes all over her robes and suddenly Slughorn is shouting at her to remove them before any of it seeps through and touches her skin lest she fall into an irreversible coma. And Tom Riddle, ever the helpful Head Boy, is quick to grab an uncontaminated section of her outer robes and tug them off. And this would be all well-and-good for drawing attention to herself, even if it's not exactly how she imagined.

But the sleeve of her jumper rides up. Because of course it does. Hermione is not quick enough. And so Tom sees the scar, the ugly scrawl of "mudblood" across her arm before she pulls the sleeve back down. She watches the disgust flicker across his face, watches as he steps away from her as quickly as he possibly can without being obvious in his dislike for her, watches as he whispers into Abraxas Malfoy's ear and how the blond is now sneering at her.

Professor Slughorn gives MacNair detention and tells Hermione that she can re-brew the potion and he won't take off points. She thanks him and tries not to hex MacNair herself.

Because now she will be proving step five while trying to accomplish all the others, and that makes her task a hundred times more complicated. There is a reason she wasn't going to reveal her heritage until _after_ steps 1-4. She feels Tom's followers' eyes on her as she leaves the classroom. She will have to watch her back.

October 15, 1944

The Slytherins have been annoying. Ink spills across her notes mid-class. Her bag splits open in the hallway. A stray hex finds her in Defense. Whatever book she needs for her arithmancy essay, or her potions essay, or her bloody transfiguration essay is always checked out at the library. Always.

They probably think they are riling her up, getting her angry or frustrated or sad. Well, she is frustrated, but only because she would like to retaliate and her version of revenge at this point would probably be frowned upon by the ministry.

Tom Riddle has pretty much always ignored her from the moment she was sorted into Gryffindor. In fact, the only interaction they have had was the one in the potions classroom where he unfortunately found out about her blood status. But now, _now_ he makes sure she _knows_ he is ignoring her. Before, he genuinely had no idea who she was. Now he goes out of his way to turn his nose up when he passes her in the hallway, to make sure he is always engaged in conversation with someone else whenever she is in his general proximity, to deliberately turn away from her whenever he sees her, occasionally with a sneer thrown in.

Hermione thinks it is hilariously petty. She supposes that it is meant to be hurtful, and maybe if she had not played this exact game with Draco Malfoy for six years straight, it might bother her. But she knows this routine, and she knows, now, how to beat it. Because the point is to make her feel isolated, hurt, worthless. They want her to cry, to yell, to pick a fight the Gryffindor way. But Hermione has tried it all, and there is only one thing that works, one thing that is more insulting than being thought of as worthless.

And that is to not be thought of at all.

She adopts a look of polite disinterest and she hands it out evenly, not only to Tom and his minions, but anyone she doesn't know well. She charms her note-taking parchment to copy itself on a separate sheet in her bag. Her bag splits in the hallway, but she can do levitation charms in her sleep, and she doesn't miss a step as her things follow behind her in a neat stack. She keeps a shield charm around her almost constantly—it is exhausting at first, but she adjusts, her _magic_ adjusts, to the strain of it. And it is ever-so-satisfying to feel Dolohov's "stray" slicing hex dissipate into nothingness at her back.

When the Gryffindor girls giggle about handsome Tom Riddle, upstanding Head Boy, when he is well-within earshot in a manner that Hermione would normally find embarrassing to be a part of, she is sure to ask, "Which one is Riddle, again?"

His eyes flash, jaw clenching as he very carefully does not look at her.

Hermione resists the urge to smile. She has won this round.

October 21, 1944

Abraxas Malfoy is almost just like his grandson, Hermione notices. He is intelligent, well-mannered when he tries, handsome, and an absolute pain in the ass. He calls her a mudblood at least once a day, and he makes sure to do it in front of Tom so that Hermione will know the Head Boy—who should be taking points for the use of the slur—agrees with him. As if that wasn't obvious.

The plus side is that her "I'm bored of you and your unoriginal insults" face makes Abraxas incredibly angry. The down-side is that he has taken it as a personal challenge. He finds her in the library, Riddle and Dolohov and few others whose names she doesn't know yet sitting at a table nearby.

"You know, I heard a few things about you," Malfoy starts. There are a dozen ways this could go, but Hermione doesn't expect what comes next. "Your filthy muggle parents. They were murdered by Grindelwald's men, weren't they? I hope they find you and finish the job."

It would be a low blow if it were true, the kind of thing you say to cripple someone, hurt them in a way you can't take back. And to an extent, she feels it. Because her parents were taken away from her—though she, technically, did that on her own—because of an entitled megalomaniac. Because she watched friends die. Because she lost so much of herself, too.

She is running to her death, she knows, sprinting for it, but there is a viciousness in her that you only acquire through devastation, and it just keeps rising, growing. She couldn't keep it down if she tried, and she isn't. So she lets that bland, disinterested mask crack just a little, just enough for the sharp edges of her smile to peek through, the coldness in her eyes.

"I hope they find me too," she says, but she is not thinking of Grindelwald, she is thinking of Tom and the way his snake-like form fell to the ground, dead, and how she'd like to see it happen again. She is thinking of Dolohov, of the scar on her chest, and how she'd like to return the favor. She is thinking of Bellatrix, how Hermione could make sure the woman is never even born. There is death in her smile. She makes sure Abraxas sees it.

 _Maybe there is no redemption_ , she thinks. _Not for Tom. Not for me._

She is not blinded enough to think she wants justice anymore. She will make things better if she can. If she cannot, she will make them burn.

October 23, 1944

Abraxas lays off with the comments about her parents and he rarely talks to Hermione, and she thinks—no, she is certain. She has unnerved him. It is easy to forget that not everyone knows war as intimately as she does. It is easy to forget that while Abraxas Malfoy might be practicing the unforgiveables under Tom's guidance—he might even have used them on someone already—he has not seen his best friend walk to his death with iron determination and a blank face. He has not been hungry the way she has. He has not had to fight the way she has.

He is a child. They all are.

Except.

Except for Tom. Tom the murderer. Tom who makes horcruxes. Tom who is waiting for her outside of potions as if they are friends. As if they have not been intentionally pushing each other's buttons for the last month. As if they do not each think the other is the vilest thing on this planet.

"Miss Granger," he says, all courtesy with one of his fake, shy smiles.

 _He cannot expect this to work,_ Hermione thinks, on the verge of laughter. She recalls a saying that her father had told her once: that once you are cruel to someone, you can never take it back no matter how much niceness you show them. _That is Tom Riddle in a nutshell_ , she thinks. Only, he has misplayed his hand with her.

"Mr. Riddle," she greets with the slight nod of her head, as bland as ever. "If you wanted a private word with Professor Slughorn, I suggest you hurry. I can practically hear the third years from here."

She knows that's not what he's waiting for, but it is part of the act. She starts walking towards her next class, transfiguration, and almost smiles when he all-but jogs to catch up with her.

"Actually, I was hoping to have a word with you," he says. It is a valiant effort: the slight blush to his cheeks, the way his eyes keep darting to hers and away, almost as if he's embarrassed, nervous. He is a terribly good actor.

 _So I have his attention,_ she thinks. _Now, what to do with it?_

"In public?" she asks, teasingly. It's a risky move, but she can tell that he's about to launch into some bullshit or other, and she doesn't have the energy for it today. "I don't think that would be conducive to an honest conversation for either of us."

He frowns at her. "Miss Granger, I don't understand—"

She levels him with her best McGonagall gaze. "I assure you, I am not an idiot, Riddle, and I don't think you are one either."

His mask flickers for a second, just a second, but it's enough to reassure Hermione that she's pushing in the right direction. If she's going to get on the inside, she needs him to crack in front of her. She needs him to show his true self.

"Now we can talk about our differences in front of Professor Dumbledore's classroom door if you _really_ want to," she says. Hermione smiles grimly. "But I doubt that would be to your benefit given how he doesn't seem to like you much."

He takes a step closer to her, invading her personal space, and for a split second she thinks he might actually throttle her in middle of the hallway. But then Dumbledore is coming around the corner, and Tom's hand is actually reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, not to choke her. His expression is manufactured softness, the exact kind of tenderness you'd only see on the face of someone deeply in love. Tom executes it perfectly, perfectly enough that Hermione can do nothing but stare at him.

"Later, then," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. It's intimate. It's off-putting.

And then Professor Dumbledore is clearing his throat, and Tom's lips are quirking up at the corners, his eyes never once leaving Hermione's. His hand drops from her face, but it trails down her arm on the way, his knuckles brushing against the back of her hand. As if they are some sort of secret lovers. They go into the classroom, and they sit on opposite sides of the room, but Tom's eyes keep seeking her out. It is only after the fourth time their eyes meet mid-lesson that she realizes she is glancing his way just as frequently.

Tom has won this round. Because Dumbledore is watching her suspiciously now, too.

October 24, 1944

The owl comes at breakfast with the rest of the post, but it lands in front of Hermione, a small bit of parchment tied to its leg, and that is what's different. Aside from the Daily Prophet, Hermione just doesn't _get_ mail. She doesn't have anyone to correspond with in this time. And yet the owl is staring at her.

"Oooh, did you get mail, Hermione?" Beatrice Abbot asks. She's one of Hermione's roommates: a kind girl, if a bit nosy. Beatrice waggles her eyebrows suggestively. "From a secret admirer?"

Hermione would bet anything that it is _not_ a secret admirer. Carefully, she takes the tiny scroll and unrolls it. It isn't signed, but she knows the delicate script. She has seen Harry's memories from the diary.

"10 o'clock tonight. Dungeons. Room 012," it reads. It seems it's time for her and Tom to have their little talk.

"So?" Beatrice says, eyes hopeful and eager. "Is it a clandestine meeting? A secret love note? A challenge to duel?"

With a careful flick of her fingers, Hermione lit the parchment on fire and watched it disintegrate into ash. She looks up at the other girl and pretends to look embarrassed.

"Something like that," she says.

October 24, 1944 (9:55 PM)

Hermione does not tell Beatrice Abbot who sent the note that morning, but that did not stop the girl from trying to guess.

"Is it Longbottom?" she asks in herbology.

In arithmancy, her guess is, "No, no, wait. Lovegood? From Ravenclaw?"

And then at dinner, she decides, "I've got it. Fleamont Potter!"

But Hermione had denies all of them, and Beatrice does not bother to guess a single Slytherin. She does, however, insist on helping Hermione with her hair, and Hermione cannot find a legitimate excuse to decline the offer. Besides, there is something poetic about going to meet Tom Riddle in the dungeons looking a bit like a 1940s femme fatale with her magically acquired soft curls.

The disillusionment charm over her holds as she makes her way to the dungeons and down to room 012. She is a few minutes early, but that gives her the opportunity to scope out the place first. She is not going to let herself walk into a trap. But it doesn't appear to be one because no strange curses are waiting for her, and no one is lurking in the corners. She is confident about this; her detection charms are _very_ good.

"Miss Granger," Tom says when he enters the room, still cordial. Still pretending.

"Riddle."

He is looking at her oddly, and it takes her a minute to realize that he is staring at her hair. It takes her another minute to remember that he has never seen her look put-together because Hermione has not really bothered with that since coming to the 1940s. _It must be quite the shock_.

"Beatrice Abbot was convinced that I was having a clandestine meeting with a secret lover," she says by way of explanation, the faintest trace of amusement lacing her tone. Tom quirks a brow. "She is a rather persistent girl."

"Well, you were the one to insist on a _private_ meeting," he says somewhat suggestively.

Hermione stands and circles the room, her wand moving in quick, complicated motions as she throws up some of the most serious privacy wards that she knows. Part of it is paranoia—if she's forced to reveal some critical piece of information, she doesn't want the possibility of anyone listening in. Part of it is reassurance for Riddle because he might be a little more open if he feels like he's in a secure place. And part of it is just showing off. She needs to prove she's worth collecting tonight, and this is as good a place to start as any.

But Tom, ever suspicious, is predictable, and she can practically feel his wand pointed at her back.

"Aim your wand at me when my back is turned again," Hermione says as she turns to face him, "and I'll make sure you don't have a wand-arm to raise."

"Bold words for a mudblood," Tom says. That word used to make her flinch, but now she smiles because _finally_ they are getting somewhere. "Though I shouldn't be surprised. You are a Gryffindor."

She studies him for a moment. "I like you better this way."

It's the truth, not just an attempt at flattery. This is the Riddle that she knows how to handle. This is young Lord Voldemort, and she has spent the past seven years of her life fighting Lord Voldemort. She _knows_ him.

"Do you?" he asks, one brow quirked, a smirk on his face. It is cruel and promises violence, but Hermione wouldn't have it any other way. Her responding smile is just as mean.

"Humanity doesn't suit you," she says, watches as the words dig into him just enough to make his eye flicker with rage for a split second.

"No," he agrees. "I am above it."

Hermione does not deny it, though privately she thinks that he is actually beneath humanity. He is a monster. He is a vile, cruel, heartless thing that merely takes the shape of a boy. But now is not the time to tell him so.

"Well, let's get on with it," she says instead. She hops up on the edge of a desk and leans back, doing her best to look casual, at home in this empty classroom, alone with a boy who might kill her if she says the wrong thing. "You wanted to talk. Let's talk."

"What I actually want," Tom says, twirling his wand between his fingers, "is to see what you're capable of."

The words are barely out of his mouth when a jet of light streams towards her, bright red and unmistakably the cruciatus. She rolls off the desk quickly, body running on autopilot. She is not surprised, really, that he has chosen to curse her, test her. But the proximity of the curse sends her spinning into battle mode before she can even think twice about it. She fires off spells so quickly, she is only barely keeping track of them, where they land, if they manage to do any damage. Tom is adept at dodging, but he can't avoid all of her spells.

For all that Tom is likely the best duelist that Hogwarts has seen in a hundred years, he is not battle-hardened the way Hermione is.

When the duel—if it can even be called such—ends ten minutes later, they are both heaving, sweat-slicked and blood-stained. There's no serious damage, nothing permanent, nothing that will draw too many questions. It is a tie, both of their wands leveled easily at the other's throat, but only because Hermione is not quite ready to kill him. Not quite ready to give up on her plan to save the future.

"I have a study group," Tom says conversationally, though he still doesn't lower his wand. Neither of them want to be the first to concede. "You would be a welcome addition."

"Would I?" she asks dryly, eyes darting briefly to where her scar is hidden under her robes. She doesn't need to elaborate; she is sure Tom will know her meaning.

"I'll owl you with the next meeting," he says in lieu of answering her question. And then he's gone, backing out of the room, careful to keep Hermione always in his line of sight until he's out in the hallway.

Only once she is on her way back to the Gryffindor dorms, cloaked again in a heavy disillusionment charm, does she allow herself a smile. She's not _in_ with Tom yet, not really, but her foot is in the door, and that's enough for now.

-Author's Note-

Once again, here's an October Spook-fest story. Like the others, it's a one-shot that might get another chapter or two after the challenge is over, so keep an eye out! In the meantime, feel free to comment, favorite, etc. I always love hearing from you guys!

AND now I'm on tumblr as **officialsporkintheroad**! Come talk to me about fics, writing, Tomione, Harry Potter, or really anything at all! I'll also be posting moodboards/aesthetics for my fics, book covers, and other fun things!


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